Vintage Londoner with retrocentric tastes. Interested in the uncommon,artistic,cultural and visual life of this old tart of a city and its tawdry glamour. Tinctured with cocktails, swear words and the odd rant. I'm friendly but bolshy and my opinions are honest and sponsor-free. P.R and marketing types please see 'About Me'.
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Monday, 6 August 2012

'Olympic' London.

Before I start let me warn the
reader, I am an Olympic cynic and whilst I am happy other people are having fun
and feeling proud, I’m not an Olympic bunter myself. I thought the views of a
dyed in the wool born and bred Londoner on how the place feels might be
interesting. It is just an opinion, if I wrote about the Olympics per se it
would turn into a long rant!

The ugliest logo in Olympic history?

What is it like to be in an
Olympic City? Well quite peculiar, it is as if a large alien parasite has
suddenly landed, crablike on the city and taken it over. Or maybe
it is more an like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. We knew stuff was being
built in a bit of London most of us never go near at great expense but
suddenly, with fireworks and a lot of entertaining Danny Boyle directed guff it
was upon us. London is again festooned with flags, a riot of international colour
this time rather than the red, white and blue of the Union Flag. This flag business is a good thing and is very
attractive, we should have more flags every summer; I’d like to see a load of Jolly
Rogers on Regent’s Street! Unfortunately the official designs for the Olympics are
uniformly ugly. London is enveloped in purple with a cerise accent (it is like
someone chewed a wine gum and spat it out over the city), an ugly font and an
inelegant symbol outdone in ugliness only by the grotesque mascot who bears the
kind of name you expect a Dickensian murderer to have. Not that that is a
problem, I like the name ‘Wenlock’. I think the swimming pool should have been
called the ‘sink’ and the main stadium the ‘bear pit’ for true London
authenticity.

Wenlock!

London has also been invaded by
an army of happy volunteers wearing shell
suitey type things in the aforementioned nasty colour scheme, the whole place
is awash with garish nylon. The city is also full of people often proudly occasionally
smugly wearing big plastic squares with the word ‘OCOG’ emblazoned on them. Those
that are not Olympic storm troopers are similarly generally wrapped in
sportswear. Everywhere you look people are got up like seven year olds in
crackly brightly coloured clothes. The static generated must be fantastic. When
you are not party to the sea of Olympic spectators it is an odd feeling,
curiously Kafkaesque, of suddenly being a stranger in your own home. Like
coming home from holiday to find someone has moved into your flat, but in a
friendly way.

Terrible uniforms invade London Streets...but I like the grins.

There are only two ways to
approach the thing really; one is to wholeheartedly throw yourself into it and
indulge in Olympic Spirit until the British position in the medal league
becomes your sole overriding obsession. The bread and circuses approach is not
to be dismissed, the money has gone, it will be gone when this is over so some
might as well have a bit of fun and entertainment while it is here. The other
approach is to quietly let it be, avoid the areas where it is happening or
leave the country.There is no real
escape however short of moving to a cave and if you are not a sports fan you
just have to quietly grit your teeth and get on with it, it is only a couple of
weeks after all.

Pretty flags, we've got them now, can we put them out every summer?

There was a lot of scare
mongering before the whole thing kicked off. Yes London Bridge station was
doing a good impression of a scene from Bosch when I visited it, the rudeness
of some of the visitors was startling (so much for Olympic Spirit) but the
volunteers were doing a good job. It takes a certain amount of verve and
fortitude to answer the same daft question forty times in a day. But they have
seemed to be unremittingly cheerful and good natured which should give visitors
a totally unjustified impression of Londoners as a jolly welcoming lot, like
Italians but without the sunshine. Mind you the system of 'penning' travellers in was worrying, especially as the queues for particular platforms suddenly switched, a bit like the railway version of Hogwart's corridors.

The 'pens' for commuters at London Bridge.

Lots of people have heeded these
doom laden warnings and taken the avoidance approach. I have never seen central
London quieter; there were more people around after the bombings. Seats can be
obtained on tubes and trains, theatres, pubs and clubs are quiet and last
Saturday I could see broad expanses of pavement on Oxford Street. This
was very pleasant for me but not so good for traders and businesses. This was even the case during the hugely
popular torch relay; people didn’t really buy much from local bars or cafes who
were advised by local councillors to get extra staff in. But as a relative of
mine said regarding the popularity of the torch relay ‘Londoner’s will go and
watch the opening of a curtain if it is free’ and restaurants and pubs aren’t.

Nothern line was still running at 1.00 am, why only during the Olympics?

I haven’t watched much of it but
ultimately it hasn’t had much negative impact on me or much impact at all
really. I may get cross when the next big sweep of nurse sackings takes place
especially as some of those dancing nurses are likely to get the chop. But for
now I can at least, if nothing else, appreciate the surreal quality of Olympic
London. There is however one aspect of it that I am complete impressed by: the
underground trains running later, significantly later on Fridays and Saturdays.
For a single London lady about town it makes a big difference. Why not have the
late Friday and Saturdays all year? Any
future mayoral candidate who pushes this will get my vote. I also realised on
Saturday that my Chinese dress was in the Olympic pink and purple (don’t ask),
is the body snatching Olympic crab parasite subconsciously taking me over too?

7 comments:

All the 'volunteers' at London bridge were so happy because they were all actually network rail employees who were getting they're usual pay, along with a rather substantial bonus!Inside knowledge!! ;)

This sounds very much like Sydney during the 2000 Olympics. I avoided everything like the plague, but the city was strangely quiet (rumour had it that the planes leaving Sydney has more passengers than those arriving). I experienced a number of episodes with the same rude tourists (there was nearly an accident on one of the train lines as some idiot tried to leap into a carriage as the train pulled away.